Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[AwesomeButton]

Looks like about 10% of the population of the Balkans, to be fair.

Also related to your comments on balkan women from earlier:

 

[gurugeorge]

Looks like about 10% of the population of the Balkans, to be fair.

Also related to your comments on balkan women from earlier:

View attachment 40433

The stereotype is true. I was just on a train yesterday and there was a rather tasty Eastern European MILF (of some sort, the language sounded slavic - wasn't Russian exactly but sounded Russian-ish, maybe Ukrainian?) who had in tow a rubicund slavic chap, chunky and solid as a truck, with that big but straight slavic nose and the kind of blubberous lips that would have been handsome cupid lips without the extra fat, with an enormous pot belly perfectly positioned to rest his mobile phone

 

[AwesomeButton]

The contrast in fashion style is also spot on. The woman is always as if going to a club party, the man beside her - shorts or track suit, sandals or trainers respectively.

 

[gurugeorge]

It does bring up the question of why gaymers feel so married to DnD. Near as I can tell, its not a particularly fantastic system (any edition) to begin with, and requires heavy handed modification to translate it from tabletop to CRPG, and the setting and lore just gets increasingly indistinctive and gayer with every edition. Moreover, its derivative to begin with. Why cant people just make their own tolkien rip off? Why do studios feel the need to get into bed with WOTC just have a generic fantasy license?

D&D is pretty much the best at what it does, whether that's tense sword and sorcery in the old editions or whatever genre of high fantasy 3e and 5e are. All the games that compete for that spot are OSR hacks that clean up old editions or things similar to Pathfinder which can only be created with the benefit of years of experience with a particular edition. In theory I totally agree that devs could create better original systems, but in practice I don't think that will ever happen. When devs try to create their own fantasy systems we end up with abominations like DOS:2 and Tyranny, or bland attempts at innovation like Pillars of Eternity, or simple D&Dlikes that have one or two original ideas.

As for getting into bed with WOTC, that's not really necessary. Thanks to the Open Game License (OGL) which was introduced in 3e, you could make a 5e or 3e or Pathfinder game tomorrow without needing to contact WOTC. Knights of the Chalice 1/2 and the Owlcat Pathfinder games use this license, although there are some particularities that you need to go through in order to be compliant with the license. You're not allowed to use trademarks or copy text outside of something called the "System Reference Document," which contains all the core rules, core races, and core classes, and core spells. You also have to create a document that outlines the entirety of your system, and that document must also be released under the OGL. Owlcat made a 1000 page reference document for this reason: https://owlcat.games/PFWotRCRPGRD but this only applies to WOTR. Kingmaker technically isn't compliant with the license since it doesn't have an equivalent reference document, thankfully WOTC doesn't pay too much attention.

WOTC tried to revoke this license a few months ago but they got such an incredible backlash that they reneged and decided it would be irrevocable. They may try to change it in some future edition but all previous edition's OGL will still be usable if they do that

I was struck once by how "realistic-looking" the D&D combat in Pathfinder was in the trash fights, if you just let your characters get on with it in realtime. Just the rhythm and pacing of the battle looked pretty realistic to how you imagine melee combat would look. Maybe 6 seconds is a bit long for "moves" in terms of realism (really it should be more like 3 seconds or something like that), but if you look at how mediaeval LARP-ers who do semi-real fighting behave (compared to the more flashy, accurate stylistic "martial arts" of the more serious mediaeval/reniaissance manual reconstructionists), it does kind of look like that; it's (as Zeropunctuation once twitted) two people taking turns to kick each others' shins until one of them falls down

What I mean is, D&D is "simulationist" in terms of what people think mediaeval combat would have looked like (even though we know from the manuals that it was much more tricksy and sophisticated than that, really fully as sophisticated as East Asian martial arts) - so maybe that's the secret of its success, it appeals to people's imaginary idea of the crudity of what that type of combat would have been like.

 

[whydoibother]

The contrast in fashion style is also spot on. The woman is always as if going to a club party, the man beside her - shorts or track suit, sandals or trainers respectively.

The local ogre mindset is that fashion is girly, and its manly to not attempt to look good. Just display physical fitness or wealth, without trying to display fashion, aesthetics or class.

 

[Ryzer]

You guys should try to randomize the appearance of the githyanki in the character creation, I still have nightmares.

 

[Kiste]

The contrast in fashion style is also spot on. The woman is always as if going to a club party, the man beside her - shorts or track suit, sandals or trainers respectively.

When Slavic women hit the wall, they hit the wall hard. They basically go splat.

 

[Sunri]

Wtf bros stop this bigotry!

 

[whydoibother]

The contrast in fashion style is also spot on. The woman is always as if going to a club party, the man beside her - shorts or track suit, sandals or trainers respectively.

When Slavic women hit the wall, they hit the wall hard. They basically go splat.

Dependant on tobacco/alcohol abuse. If they are clean, they age like east asians: uncertain age between 20 and 50, and then polymorph into deep gnomes at 51.
With enough smoking and boozing, they look like elder liches at 30. The skeletal hands are a particular tell, investigation DC 5.

 

[Ryzer]

Can someone recommend a class to play as the dark urge?

I'm hesitant around Paladin- Vengeance - Oathbreaker or Sorcerer but mages are kinda boring and unfit to psycho murderer or maybe warlock?

 

[whydoibother]

mages are kinda boring

unfit to psycho murderer

Lore-wise, assassin rogue or berserker barbarian fit best. Warlock would be weird, since your background spoilers-spoilers already has you be a member of a certain worship club, so the demonic pact is unfitting. But as I've said before, its great for schizomaxxing - tadpole + urges + demon + amnesia.
Don't go cleric, makes no sense with the background. And note that the character is canonically from Baldur's Gate, so don't pick a gith, makes no sense.

 

[Ryzer]

A mage is weak in terms of strength but the dark urge background is related to someone having dark impulses leading him to kill even with his bare hands, so that immediately dismiss weak strength chars, imo.

 

[Avarize]

Can someone recommend a class to play as the dark urge?

I'm hesitant around Paladin- Vengeance - Oathbreaker or Sorcerer but mages are kinda boring and unfit to psycho murderer or maybe warlock?

Warlock is the mosy fun out of those, especially if you take one wizard level.

 

[whydoibother]

A mage is weak in terms of strength but the dark urge background is related to someone having dark impulses leading him to kill even with his bare hands, so that immediately dismiss weak strength chars, imo.

Could just as easily refer to shooting lightning out of his hands while choking you.
But if you want to lean into that, there's a lot of good monk specific gloves and rings, that make the class a min-maxer's dream.
Go heavy strength, take the brawler feat as soon as possible, and tear people apart with your hands. There's also a subclass that's about darkness and stealth. And the WIS saving throws are useful to control the Urge, impose your will on the tadpole and other True Souls, and generally resist enemy's attempts to control you in fights.

 

[The_Mask]

Looks like about 10% of the population of the Balkans, to be fair.

Also related to your comments on balkan women from earlier:

View attachment 40433

I don't think that people that don't live in the Balkans realize how true this one is.

 

[Kiste]

Dependant on tobacco/alcohol abuse. If they are clean, they age like east asians: uncertain age between 20 and 50, and then polymorph into deep gnomes at 51.

YES! I live basically in a Russian ghetto. I'm surrounded by Orcs and this is exactly it. The females are hot when young and still very presentable as MILFs and then suddenly they transform into horrendous harpies that are not even remotely reasonable to look at. I'm always amazed how that works.

 

[whydoibother]

Dependant on tobacco/alcohol abuse. If they are clean, they age like east asians: uncertain age between 20 and 50, and then polymorph into deep gnomes at 51.

YES! I live basically in a Russian ghetto. I'm surrounded by Orcs and this is exactly it. The females are hot when young and still very presentable as MILFs and then suddenly they transform into horrendous harpies that are not even remotely reasonable to look at. I'm always amazed how that works.

Its the same wizard that visits men when they turn 33 and casts curses on their knees and back. The distance between "best shape of my life" and "better do some stretches before i move this chair" is literally 24 hours.

 

[NecroLord]

Weren't The Harpers, or The Ones that Harp basically True Neutral? Aren't they in service of balance?

Lol, no. [citation provided] Their "balance" spiel is in the Star Wars sense, they're strictly Good-aligned (Chaotic Good, really, with an emphasis on meddling).

Chaotic Stupid more like.

 

[Lagole Gon]

For some reason I can't stop laughing at this guy's face:

More or less how my shoulders & back looked like before laser hair removal.

I'm so glad I live in more progressive times, in the old days I would been chased away to woods and forced to live the rest of my life as a hairy folklore creature.

 

[jf8350143]

The game offers you a lot of choices, but most of them are fake, if you don't follow the "true" path, then the narriative just stops making sense completely.

For example if you let Lae'zel use the machine to "heal herself", you get a choice to tell the leader of the gith there is a traitor. But when you tell her, she will say you claim to have found the artifact they are searching, despite you've never said anything about it to anyone. And you have no choice but to show her the artifact or kill her.

Another example is Rolan, if you persaude him to leave the groove, you will still find him in chapter 2 searching for his friends and you can tell him his friends died in the moonrise tower, but you never see their corpses so you shouldn't know that they are dead.

 

[Nikanuur]

Mods have already fixed Shadowheart's hair.

There's also another fix of a kind; put on a hat. It (magically?) switches her hairdo into something completely different, and quite fashionable at that! With those loose locks of hair and solemn eyes peering behind the brim, she immediately starts to look like a female Van Helsing wannabe.

I was surprised they made such a special effort just for that. I mean, a buff-featureless hat is probably the least desirable choice with so many really functional pieces of head gear lying around, yet they did this. I'm writing from the night shift; I'll post a picture from home later on.

Here it is. The fix to Shadowheart's horrible hairdo
I used to have a version with an almost-fedora and it looked better but I can't find. I am sorry.

 

[processdaemon]

Raphael's boss theme is great, getting to listen to it again and again was the one upside of all the time he spent wiping the floor with me

 

[gurugeorge]

For example if you let Lae'zel use the machine to "heal herself", you get a choice to tell the leader of the gith there is a traitor. But when you tell her, she will say you claim to have found the artifact they are searching, despite you've never said anything about it to anyone. And you have no choice but to show her the artifact or kill her.

Yeah I got exactly that sequence of events. It was a bit disappointing. Must surely be a bug that will be ironed out - I doubt they wouldn't have taken into account that path of possibilities.

 

[janior]

The game offers you a lot of choices, but most of them are fake

staying authentic to the originals

 

[SmartCheetah]

Raphael's boss theme is great, getting to listen to it again and again was the one upside of all the time he spent wiping the floor with me

I couldn't stand it, and this battle was so long, as I'm playing a necromancer with shitloads of minions.